Business consulting is a diverse and dynamic field. Consulting procedures exist for a wide range of business types and activities. For example, consulting activities for companies in manufacturing industries can differ greatly from consulting activities for companies in service industries. For companies in manufacturing industries, a business consultant may employ analytical methods and tools that are focused on manufacturing and shipping cost control or product quality improvement. For service industry companies, a consultant may use analytical methods and tools that are focused on employee retention and customer satisfaction. Although some methods and tools are industry- or company-specific, some core analytic methods and tools can be applied across a wide range of business activities, either with or without adaptation.
Generally, many business analytic tools are financial analysis tools. Such tools allow a business consultant or a manager of a business to determine from where a business entity receives its income and to what uses the business places its financial assets. These tools have the advantage of being able to be employed across a wide range of business activities because use of these tools depends on a common language of business, namely finance and accounting. However, in many instances, these tools are poorly suited for the task of identifying operational areas of a business that can be more effectively managed to help the business become more successful.
Current analytic methods and tools for business consulting often focus on financial performance to the exclusion of other important operational characteristics like the culture of the business or how the business responds to marketplace forces. Businesses are dynamic entities that interact with other entities in business environments. Businesses ordinarily react to marketplace forces and sometimes set those forces in motion in the first place. By acting or reacting effectively, a business can succeed in the marketplace and thrive as a viable entity.
Many traditional consulting processes for assessing an organization can take several weeks because they include many non-value added activities which take a lot of time. Such processes do not focus well enough on those activities that truly result in the recommendation of effective solutions to improve the performance of an organization. Other consulting processes and systems are too focused on gathering information in an efficient and timely manner and totally eliminate the value that can be gained by having people within the organization interact with each other as part of the assessment process.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,556,974 to D'Alessandro describes a system for providing accurate, quantifiable and reproducible assessments of an organization's performance based on determined criteria. The system includes a telecommunications infrastructure administered by a survey administrator. Employees and non-employees of a company or other organization to be evaluated log on to the system and answer a plurality of questions relating to various aspects of the business entity's operations. The information may be obtained through Internet communications, through touch-tone telephone systems, and in many other ways including the use of personal computers, diskettes and email, or even manually including the use of pencil and paper where penciled-in answers are read by a scanner. The data is stored in a database and subsequently analyzed by the survey administrator for evaluation and forecasting of the business entity's performance. A web server embodiment is remotely accessible and provides the opportunity to quickly and efficiently gather information and may be available 24 hours per day for employee or non-employees to log on and respond to questions. A complete assessment of a large corporation may be completed more rapidly and efficiently than using independent consultants that interview onsite. Employees of the business are provided with the opportunity to submit honest and candid answers to potentially sensitive questions.
However, the approach described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,556,974 tends not to facilitate interaction between employees as part of the assessment process. U.S. Pat. No. 6,556,974 seems to sacrifice the value that can come from team interaction for efficiency, accuracy, and convenience in gathering information.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional, traditional, and proposed approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems and methods with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.